Month: May 2000

LOS ANGELES––Alex Pacheco, who with Ingrid Newkirk cofounded People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals in 1981, left PETA at the end of 1999 to head the newly formed Humane America Foundation, billed–– in a distinct break from PETA policy––as focusing on dogs and cats, intending to help make the U.S. a no-kill nation. PETA has always been highly critical of no-kill sheltering.

Other key figures with Humane America include executive director David Meyer, who was executive director at Last Chance for Animals, 1995-1998, and research director Doug Mckee, of Virginia. Various celebrities have also lent their names to it.

The first Humane America project was a survey of 517 Los Angeles residents about pets and attitudes toward petkeeping. It mostly confirmed the findings of surveys of San Jose and San Diego residents done in 1995 and 1996 by Karen Johnson of the National Pet Alliance. L.A. residents kept fewer cats than expected, however, and opposite to Johnson’s findings had fixed 80% of their dogs but only 67% of their cats.

California Attorney General Bill Lockyer during the first week of April issued a legal opinion that pigeon shoots are illegal under existing California anti-cruelty legislation, because “conducting a pigeon shoot subjects the pigeons to needless suffering, inflicts unnecessary cruelty upon the birds, abuses the pigeons, and takes place after the contest organizers have failed to provide the birds with proper food and drink.” Lockyer wrote in response to a request from state assembly member Sheila James Kuehl, who questioned the legality of a four-day pigeon shoot held in 1998 in Sierra county. “Pigeon shoots are now held only in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Texas,” said Fund for Animals national director Heidi Prescott, “All three have pending litigation to halt pigeon shoots under state anti-cruelty laws.” The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled in 1999 that the Pennsylvania anti-cruelty law is applicable to pigeon shoots, bringing the end of the notorious Labor Day shoot at H e g i n s, which had been held since 1935. Existing laws were first used successfully to stop pigeon shoots in 1992, when S H A R K founder S t e v e Hindi stopped them in Illinois.

HOUSTON, CALCUTTA–– The growing proliferation of poorly housed, understimulated, and often underfed big cats in private hands was spotlighted yet again at a child’s expense on March 15 in the Channelview district of Houston.

Jayton Tidwell, 4, wandered outdoors unseen during a family reunion and apparently tried to pet his uncle Larry Tidwell’s pet tiger. The tiger bit young Tidwell’s arm off at the elbow. Neurosurgeon Mark Henry reattached the arm and waived his fees, but the medical costs are still expected to exceed $500,000.

The tiger remained on the premises, haphazardly “quarantined” under a blue plastic tarpaulin.

The incident was heavily publicized for several days, but went unmentioned in national coverage of a March 29 press conference in Washington D.C. called by actresses Bo Derek, Melanie Griffith, and Tippi Hedren to promote “The Shambala Wild Animal Protection Act of 2000.”

There is much debate among animal rights activists as to whether horseback riding is justifiable. In the long run, in my view, it is probably not. Yet there are nearly seven million domesticated horses in the U.S., and most will be trained for riding and driving. Leaving them alone in pastures is not realistic and could subject them, paradoxically, to abusive boredom.

Ryszard Karczewski, DVM, 43, of Warsaw, Poland, was mauled on March 13 while trying to tranquilize one of three Bengal tigers who escaped from the Korona Circus. Already fatally injured, he was then accidentally shot in the chest by police who were trying to save him. The tiger, at large for about two hours, was also killed. The other two tigers were recaptured earlier. The R z e c z p o s p o l i t a daily newspaper two days later received an e-mail from a previously unknown group calling itself the Polish League for Protection of Animals, which claimed it had released the tigers and added that it would release animals from circuses or zoos once a week. The same perpetrators are believed to be responsible for releasing four polar bears from the Nuremburg Zoo in Germany on March 30. All four bears were shot dead after tranquilization attempts failed.

Naren Saikia, a guard and tiger census worker at Kaziranga National Park, near Guwahati, India, was fatally gored by a mother rhino on March 16, who apparently mistook him for a threat to her calf.

Donner, 7, German shepherd companion to Humane Society of Central Oregon director Kimball Lewis, 38, was allegedly stolen from Lewis’ yard in Deschutes County, Oregon, near Bend, toward dawn on April 12; was shot in the head; and was then returned to the yard and hanged from a juniper bush. Police believe the killing was either an act of revenge or attempted intimidation of Lewis, who is known as an aggressive cruelty investigator, and has been involved in many controversial cases. The Oregon Humane Society posted a reward of $5,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the perpetrator(s), and the reward fund grew to $15,000 within 24 hours. Lewis was previously director of the Greenhill Humane Society in Eugene. Donner, his constant companion, came to work with him every day.

Cero, 3, a German shepherd police dog, was fatally shot on March 25 in Jefferson, Ohio, while attempting to subdue one Levi Ridenour. Ridenour had fatally ambushed a man named Walter Olsen as Olsen took a dawn walk. Ridenour was still carrying a concealed firearm, unknown to police, when Cero intervened. Ridenour was killed in an ensuing shootout. Three hundred police officers and 70 fellow police dogs from around Ohio, Illinois, Kentucky, and West Virginia attended a full police funeral for Cero, who also received an unprecedented human-style obituary in the Ashtabula Star Beacon. Cero shared the home of Ashtabula County sheriff’s deputy William Niemi and family. “He was as much a police officer as any of us,” fellow deputy Joseph Niemi told Michael Sangiacomo of the Cleveland Plain Dealer. “Cero sensed the danger, and died saving my brother’s life. For that, I thank him. He also saved other people’s lives. We don’t know who else might have died if not for his sacrifice.” The North Coast Humane Society of Cleveland and the Public Animal Welfare Society donated bulletproof vests in his memory to the two surviving Astabula County police dogs.

Vegetarian actor James Cromwell, who played Farmer Hoggett in Babe, told viewers of an Easter-season TV ad sponsored by P E T A that, “Pigs are sensitive, intelligent animals. Please do your part. Stop eating pigs.” PETA is also sponsoring signs on which actresses Sandra Bernhard, Elizabeth Hurley, Judi Dench, and Bea Arthur ask women to “Join us in saying ‘neigh’ to Premarin,” which is based on urine from pregnant mares kept in close confinement. Their foals are mostly sold for slaughter.

Harvey Jacobson, of Austin, Texas, who recently sold Jacobson Manufacturing f o r $270 million, gave $1 million to Wildlife Rescue & Rehabilitation of Bourne, Texas, sanctuary manager Tim Ajax told ANIMAL PEOPLE. WRR used the money to buy a 187-acre new site near Kendalia––six times larger than the present facility, located near fast-growing San Antonio.

Retired biology professor H a r o l d “Catman” Sims, of Cashiers, North Carolina, was appalled that the Jackson County shelter killed 657 of the 755 cats it had received in 1994 ––so he built his own 55-cat shelter and began arranging adoptions. By March 2000, Sims had placed more than 600 cats, while Jackson County cat intake fell to 469 and cat killing to 202.

The article “Shelter killing: how low can you go?”, in the March 2000 edition of ANIMAL PEOPLE, accurately stated that, “The dog and cat killing ratio in San Francisco shelters, already the lowest of any major U.S. city, fell 24% in 1999, to just 3.9 animals killed per 1,000 human residents.”

Extra zeros were somehow added to the number 1,000 in two later sentences, which should have read, “The San Francisco data significantly lowered the floor ratios below which dog and cat euthanasias per 1,000 human residents have never gone. The table below shows in the first column the 1999 San Francisco ratios of dog and cat euthanasias per 1,000 human residents for each major cause.”

Instead, the number “1,000” came out “100,000.”

The number 1,000 and the ratios based upon it were accurately stated throughout the rest of the article.

Internet anti-pornography filtering software used by U.S. schools and libraries is reportedly steering “hits” away from , the wildlife diary site of British artist Richard Bell, because his topics include blue tits, a pair of great tits, and “a magnificent cock pheasant.” All are birdspecies names which are at least as well-known worldwide as the other uses of the words, known mainly to Americans.

The British Broadcasting Corporation has discontinued the BBC Vegetarian Good Food magazine, founded in 1992. The magazine reportedly surged in popularity when the 1996 bovine spongiform encephalopathy panic brought a rapid decline of beef consumption, but lost circulation and advertising in recent years when many hasty converts to vegetarianism returned to their

SITE UNDER CONSTRUCTION

This site is currently under construction. We apologize for any temporary inconvenience.
Please e-mail info@animalpeopleforum.org with questions or concerns, or to request any articles or issues not yet available online.